Non-Brownian suspensions present a transition from Newtonian behavior in the zero-shear limit to a shear thickening behavior at a large shear rate, none of which is clearly understood so far. Here, we carry out numerical simulations of such an athermal dense suspension under shear, at an imposed confining pressure. This setup is conceptually identical to recent experiments of Boyer, Guazzelli, and Pouliquen [Phys. Rev. Lett. 107, 188301 (2011)]. Varying the interstitial fluid viscosities, we… CONTINUE READING